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The Indeterminacy of Longform Poetics in John Cage and Charles Olson

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The Indeterminacy of Longform Poetics in John Cage and Charles Olson Faculty of English The Indeterminacy of Longform Poetics in John Cage and Charles Olson Brendan Charles Gillott Corpus Christi College University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2017 Abstract: The Indeterminacy of Longform Poetics in John Cage and Charles Olson This thesis is concerned with the longform poetics of Charles Olson and of John Cage, and with the role indeterminacy plays in their constitution and reception. The work of these authors poses unusual and particular challenges to readers, and it is towards readers and reading that this thesis is primarily oriented. Each chapter describes a problem or difficulty which these texts create for readers, and attempts to model that difficulty as clearly as possible in order to demonstrate how it forces readers to reassess received readerly protocols. As such, the thesis is also concerned with the limits of traditional critical methodologies in the face of such works. Though the concrete examples presented are mostly taken from a relatively circumscribed time and culture – the USA post-World War Two – I claim that the problematics of indeterminacy herein discussed are generally prevalent in long poetic forms, and in a certain sense constitutive of them. The thesis maps how ‘indeterminacy’ as a concept within literary criticism conflicts with that model of criticism concerned primarily with the ‘close reading’ of texts and the hermeneutic elucidation of ‘meaning’ thereby. Between historicism and close reading, it argues that this indeterminacy is most pervasive and yet most critically overlooked within traditions of what I call ‘longform’ poetics. The Introduction, discusses the unfitness of Cage’s early text ‘Indeterminacy’ to traditional modes of close-reading as exemplified in I.A. Richards and William Empson. It then recounts the developing discourse around poetic indeterminacy as it emerged through Roman Ingarden, Wolfgang Iser, Marjorie Perloff and Charles Altieri, and how that discourse increasingly configures the question of indeterminacy less around meaning and more around reading as an activity in itself. Chapter One provides a critical redescription of Olson’s hugely influential manifesto-essay ‘Projective Verse’ via comparison to Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. Chapter Two addresses the problem of reading speed with reference to Olson’s interest in the cinema. Chapter Three describes the poetics of heterogeneity and surprise exemplified by Cage’s Mushroom Book. Chapter Four investigates the arrangement and disarray of Olson’s ‘archive poetics’ and his insistent habit of listing. Chapter Five considers how Cage’s cavilling over the idea of ‘ideas’ informs and deforms his huge mesostic lectures I-VI. Chapter Six uses Olson’s interest in models to tease out the constitution of his longform poetics on a set of indeterminate part-whole relations. Chapter Seven traces the effects of typos in two editions of Cage’s Anarchy, and in the thought and editorial practices of Olson. Throughout, the thesis delineates various protocols for reading, models for how to engage the longform texts of Olson and Cage, aiming to demonstrate how for these poetries one needs to select and ‘read through’ a poetics as a sort of optic, one through which such reticent texts can be made legible. Though ‘indeterminacy’ has a long history both within Cage’s own work and in the subsequent scholarship, this thesis does not simply follow his sense of the term. Rather, in tandem with Olson’s own pervasive though less explicit engagement with the indeterminate, it develops a fresh poetics for thinking and reading indeterminacy which mutually illuminates the work of both poets. The Indeterminacy of Longform Poetics in John Cage and Charles Olson Contents Preface ………………………………………………………………………….. p.ii Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………….. p.iii Introduction: Indeterminacy ……………………………………………………. p.1 Chapter One: Olson’s ‘Projective Verse’ ………………………………………. p.15 Chapter Two: Olson’s Speed …………………………………………………… p.30 Chapter Three: Mycopoetics: Cage’s Mushroom Book ………………………... p.49 Chapter Four: Olson, Lists and Archives ……………………………………… p.69 Chapter Five: Ideas in Cage’s I-VI …………………………………………….. p.91 Chapter Six: Models and Mereology …………………………………………... p.113 Chapter Seven: Typos ………………………………………………………….. p.136 Conclusion: Nonunderstanding ………………………………………………… p.158 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………. p.161 Discography ……………………………………………………………………. p.175 i Preface I hereby declare that: ▪ This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. ▪ It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text ▪ It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. ii Acknowledgements In the process of researching for and writing this thesis, I have accrued many debts to many people; certainly more than I can reasonably enumerate here. Nonetheless, there are several groups and individuals to whom I owe special thanks. First and foremost, to my principal supervisor Drew Milne, without whose knowledge, insight and encouragement I would not have been able to write what is presented here. In helping me formulate the scope and direction of this doctoral project he made it much more interesting than it might otherwise have been. His recommendations, criticisms and good humour have been invaluable to me; he set me down numerous profitable paths, and discouraged me from pursuing several dead ends. I am hugely grateful to him. Secondly, to James Riley, who stepped in to supervise much of the second year of this project whilst Drew was on leave. Again, his knowledge and encouragement were invaluable, and he pointed me towards much interesting material I would not otherwise have been aware of. James has taught me at several points during my university education, and my debt to him is a large one. My third set of thanks is to the various people and groups of people with whom I have interacted during my time living in Cambridge. I would like to thank everyone who I have met and befriended at Corpus Christi College, which has come to seem a second home. Academically, I owe thanks to everyone who has taught me, in whatever capacity, over the years. I would like to thank the members of several reading and discussion groups which have deeply influenced my thinking in more ways than I can count. They are: the Lyric and Performance group (and its earlier iteration, as the Poetics reading group); the Cambridge Ecocriticism Collective; and the Materials in Practice seminar. Not only were these groups intellectually stimulating, they were also enormous fun. In addition I have particular thanks to give to several individuals, who lent or gave me important materials, whose conversation informed my work, and whose aid and friendship has been a constant feature of my studies: Jack Belloli, Sarah Cain, Karen Collis, David Grundy, Srishti Krishnamoorthy, Jon Mackenzie, Joanne O’Leary, Tom O’Neill, Cal Revely-Calder, Luke Roberts (who first encouraged me to read Olson), Camille Savinien, the Skelton family and Bri Pearson, Will Styles, and Henry Vane. In their several ways they were instrumental in allowing me to complete this thesis. I must also thank my own students, whose insights, passions and resistances with regard to some of the material here discussed have been instructive. I should not forget the AHRC, for the money. The final set of thanks I owe is of the most personal kind. Firstly, to Anna, whose daily support, companionship and intelligence has been my mainstay. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to her. Lastly and most importantly, thanks go to my family. Particularly, they go to my Mum and Dad, and to my siblings, Tim and Rosie. It hardly needs to be said that without their love and encouragement none of this would have been possible. iii Introduction: Indeterminacy John Cage’s ‘Indeterminacy’ does not seem, on the surface, an especially challenging or difficult text. It does not employ unfamiliar syntax or complex rhetorical strategies. Its prose reads left-to-right, top- to-bottom. Consisting of a series of short, mostly autobiographical first-person narratives loosely strung together over a dozen double-columned pages, there seems little reason to contradict Cage’s own description of the piece: he had composed ‘a talk that was nothing but stories’.1 ‘Nothing but’, however, is not quite enough. As was his wont, Cage prefaces the body of the text with an explanation of the text’s protocols, which can also be read as a set of instructions. Here Cage informs us that the stories are to be read aloud, according to a temporal constraint, and their presentation on the page is insecure, even arbitrary. Describing his construction and use of the text at hand, he writes: In oral delivery of this lecture, I tell one story a minute. If it’s a short one, I have to spread it out; when I come
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